Bad running form= pain

Ugggh.  Today has been both good and bad.  Mainly good with a bad end.

I'll start with the bad first because that's how I'm feeling after another night of needless eating.  Not the same as last night- mainly my choices were good and they were because I was actually hungry.  Then I wasted 10 points on 3 little desserts. STUPID! But....delicious.  So as Joan suggested to me earlier (thanks Joan) you need to forgive yourself.  It happened, now I need to move on.  And not do it again tomorrow!!

The big deal that happened today was I had another physical therapy appointment.  On Monday I met with Mark and had my initial evaluation.  He was nice and gave me lots of hip rotator stretches, hamstring, and even some lower leg stretches.  He suggested trying some more elliptical to gauge how I felt and asked me to bring in my running shoes to my next appointment.  Mark's a triathlete (cool!) and was excited about all the activities I was doing and that I was a swimmer- which he said is the best workout I can get right now.  Given my goal of being able to run with no pain- he suggested I spend some time with Barb as well, who is a long distance runner and works a lot with runners and improving form.

Which was today, with Barb.  She was AWESOME.  Plain and simple, she was simply fantastic.  After a quick review with me and my chart- she immediately wanted to see my running shoes and already was telling me what my form was like and how my food landed before she even saw me stand.  She eventually had me run on the treadmill since I was having no pain.  She recorded me from behind and from the side on her iPad while I ran (slowly) on the treadmill.  Initially running wasn't painful but it quickly became more and more uncomfortable so I was glad when she asked me to stop after only a couple minutes.  Then we sat down and she explained what she saw.


Bad heel striker!

 All in all....I am a complete running disaster.  I do pretty much everything wrong.  I heel strike, I have very hard and loud foot falls, slow cadence, I don't pick up my feet enough....and that's the initial impression.  My posture is too rigid and I have such side dominance that I turn my torso more on one side than the other. My right shoulder rotates more than my left- looking like I'm trying to pull my left side along behind me.  And my left hip is too tight which isn't allowing me to get a fast enough turnover on that side, making my right side work twice as hard.  In fact, my whole left side of my body is just plain stiff and not as flexible as my right.  Also I overpronate- which looks even worse in slow motion.  Heck, I overpronate when I walk so this is nothing new.  O yeah, and I have zero forward lean.

As I sat next to her listening to her massacre my form (in a nice way, explaining along the way what it should look and feel like) I felt this odd combination of relief and embarrassment.  Relief because this is something concrete we could work on.  Embarrassment because here I thought my form was good- or so I've been told by others (until Rick Meyers' clinic that is.  Apparently he knows what he's talking about lol) and apparently this whole time I've been a complete running disaster.

She said we have two paths we could go down:
1. Work towards a goal race and get me pain free- basically fix the immediate problem and send me on my way.  She said if we do this it is very likely the problem will reoccur if I continue to run long distances- but I could keep at running less that 6 miles or so with this form long term with minimal repeats of the same type of injury.  But add in building up to half and full marathons and the injury WILL return.
2.  Take significantly more time NOW to rewire my entire running form from top to bottom.  It will take longer, but once my form is good, I shouldn't have issues running much longer distances giving my overall fitness level if I train properly.

DUH, option 2!!  There really is no option 1 is what I told her.  She replied with a "that's exactly what I was hoping to hear."

So, I have a very long and tedious road ahead of me that she said will be very challenging and frustrating, but Mark and her will be there every uncomfortable step along the way.  It WILL be worth it, for sure!  The immediate plan is lots of stretching and strengthening of my hips- especially my left hip.  After much manipulating and prodding of my hamstrings, glutes, and hips- the left hip really leaped out as the main problem.  Interesting how these things happen!  She seems concerned about possible bursitis- so she is confirming with my doctor that the hip x-rays showed the left hip clearly enough to rule it out in my left hip.  My doctor was initially focusing on the right hip, so I'm really not sure...

We will see.....but I feel more optimistic

Whoa Nelly

I am seriously having one of those nights....where I want to eat anything and everything.

 I realize in the grand scheme of Colleen's life, tonight wasn't the worst night, or even bad in comparison to old Colleen.  But I am no longer old Colleen. PERIOD.  I am nothing like her, and just thinking of how I was then and where my health was makes me feel nauseous. Or maybe that's the after affects of all the food I ate tonight....

Why are you so delicious?

Yeah, I destroyed some Stacy's pita chips and salsa....plus carrots and red pepper hummus....and 94% ff popcorn...and a huge fruit salad....and a weight watchers mini fudge bar....and a TBSP of peanut butter....and a 90cal fiber one brownie. That was all after my very filling dinner of a chicken soft taco, green beans, and potatoes.

Needless to say my tummy feels like this right now...

ouch!

Actually, my stomach felt like that an hour ago and I very impressively ignored it and kept eating.  I know, you are thinking- why would you do that?

Seriously

So what started this you ask, aside from the fact that I haven't been able to run during this beautiful fall weather?  Today I went to a ww meeting and had a gain ---> 1.4 lbs up!  I was expecting a gain soon but I've been cutting back on my food in response to my lower activity level.  But +1.4lbs?!?!  That just plain sucks- no ifs, ands, or buts. I can say all I want that I'll lose it- which is true- but it doesn't make it any less frustrating.

So the entire drive from WW to the gym I was PISSED.  The meeting tonight was about changing habits and I got zero inspiration, which is rare for me.  Usually simply hearing affirmation of what other are doing really helps me but I really heard nothing inspiring tonight....and there was something about the leader that was just....fake.  She seemed nice enough, but I just didn't feel any warm and fuzzies PLUS I was feeling down about my gain, duh!  Not a good combination when what I needed tonight was either some inspiration or a kick in the ass.

I'm glad I at least drug my sorry butt to the gym tonight and got some (minimal) sweat out on the elliptical and tortured my abs through a max effort ab workout before doing my foam rolling and 20 minutes of stretching for physical therapy.  This whole not being able to do a difficult workout sucks.

Sometimes I hate my head

Sometimes I feel like my head just messes me up.  I've talked about this issue before, so forgive me for brining it up again, but I am.  Deal with it! lol

I was going to update more about our vacation but today has just been one of those days that I need to blog about.  Because my head was all over the place and it sucked.  And the reality of any weight loss journey is that some days suck.  Heck, you have bad days no matter if you are on a weight loss journey or not, some days just suck in life.

It actually started last night when I felt ravenously hungry.  I felt like I could not eat enough and all I wanted to do was eat snack food.  I made the collosal mistake of buying said snack food at the grocery store earlier in the day, when I was feeling totally in control and confident that I could control my portion sizes.

I could not.  I was eating out of the bag....



I know, quite shocking.  This is not the Colleen I know. Even though I was eating out of the bag, I didn't eat much before I snapped myself out of it and then over estimated my pointsplus just in case.

Then last night at about 12:30am (I had gone to bed about midnight) the fire alarm decided to tell us the battery was dying, and LOUDLY.  REALLY?!?!  To get it to shut up, I had to go out and get a new 9V battery which took 2 different stops at some shady gas stations to find one.  And then it STILL wouldn't shut up.  Adrian worked some magic and the ringing went away- which actually meant he pulled it off the wires in the ceiling.  Whoops.  It took the maintenance guy less than a minute to fix today and meant that I could sleep- so thank goodness Adrian just yanked that thing down.

So I woke up this morning after a terrible and restless sleep GRUMPY.  Like WHOA.  I'm usually a morning person, so the morning grumps always make me feel off the whole day, especially because I couldn't just lace up my running shoes to burn it off because I had to take Adrian to work and then was stuck on conference calls all morning.  Not a good recipe for a solid day.  I was good with eating only clean foods until sometime around lunch when I binged out on junk.

Before you start to yell at me....I measured out each serving so I know exactly how bad it was.  In retrospect, I ate under 500 calories which really isn't that bad in comparison to some past binges.  But it just felt so wasteful because they were such empty and useless calories.

Picking up Adrian actually helped me a lot- it got my head out of the funk after getting some unsettling work news because I got to talk to him about it.  And then I got to vent about my stupid eating that day.  In the end the major reason for my eating was some bad work news and we know what stress does to me.... I then got to hit up the gym for a solid high incline walk workout (great for your glutes!!) on the treadmill which was a good sweat and felt darn good even through my sore muscles. 

Yeah, those sore muscles I got with a combination of a strength training workout on Saturday and yoga on Sunday felt good.  I hadn't done a solid strength training workout in almost 2 weeks (don't kill me, Emily!) and it's been months since my last yoga class.  In case you've never taken yoga and have shied away because people say it's too mellow or too "easy."  Those people don't know what they are talking about, so go try yoga!  Did some brutally hard moves that I still feel today!

You try holding chair pose for a full minute then get back to me!

So a weird thing happened during and after yoga....I got hit on.  And not subtly.  This guy came in late (like the last 15 minutes late) and pulled up a mat next to me and was staring at me.  At first I thought he was looking past me to the instructor or watching my form but then I realized, when he winked at me, it wasn't just that.  Can we say awkward? I'm trying to mellow out in downward dog and I catch him staring at my ass.  Then I can't help looking over as we are doing this brutal lower ab set and he was just laying there openly watching me. Really?  I was thinking I was being a mess, puffing and sweating up a storm and he was just gawking in disgust at me. Not cool man.

Until....he met me outside the locker room after.  Waiting for me.   It started so nice and friend-like, asking about yoga and what else I liked to do at the gym, how often I worked out, etc.  He secured my phone number under the instance that we could run or lift together- I was thinking "sweet, a nice workout buddy!"  Then he asked me to join him for lunch.  Right then.  Then asked if I had a boyfriend.

Ummm....hold the phone.  I laughed, and held up my hand with my wedding ring on and told him that yes, I was actually happily married but I always love new workout buddies and friends.  He recovered well and then tried to set up a time we could workout together.  At that point I was feeling way too awkward and just told him we would figure it out later.  I got home to a rambling, hard to understand message from him saying how nice it was to meet me and when could we get together for yoga or running.  Did I mention he is from Peru?  English is definitely not his first language. 

So I was flattered but I think it actually contributed to my messed up head.  This has happened before when somebody gives unwanted attention to me.  It makes me feel guilty and want to hide.  I'm not saying it's right or even sane, it's just how my head reacts to the shock.


What do you do when you are stressed? How do you combat a case of a terribly bad mood?  

I'm not actually hungry but my brain doesn't know that

Ever had that feeling like you could eat everything in your house? If you answered no to that, I'm just going to assume that you aren't human.

For everyone else- I'm curious how everyone else handles this- please respond with your helpful hints because I could use them!

I tried all my standard tactics....obviously I had dinner first and drank plenty of water and waited a good 30+ minutes after I was done dinner before I even considered entering the kitchen again. Usually this kicks my binge desire in the bud because I actually allow my brain to catch up with my stomach- what a novel thought!

30 minutes later and I still feel like I could devour everything that isn't nailed down. So, I had a little bit of my go-to craving solver- 1 serving of baked tostitos scoops with salsa (yum yum yum) along with an apple and felt a little better. To distract myself further I ripped my 3 new CDs that y'all will either cheer or point and laugh at me for. "NOW that's what I call music"- volumes 38, 39, and 40. I never looked at these albums before because I thought they were just for teeny boppers...until I was in Walmart today and realized that I liked every single one of the 20 songs on each one and they were only $12. HECK YEAH! So now I finally have some decent workout music. RHCP, I still love you, but sometimes you just plain suck to run or lift to and I want some Britney and Pit Bull.

So...I came here to further distract myself from further binge damage. This past week has been really stressful with my mom receiving some bad test results but it's calmed down a little bit because today the oncologist feels we can wait another month to recheck blood work and the CT scan and then go the surgery and chemo route. At least this way we can celebrate the holidays together before she goes into another round of terrible cancer crap...such a relief.

Ever since I got a scary text from her Thursday afternoon I have gone through a roller coaster of emotions and honestly can't believe I came out the other side 2 lbs lighter. I can thank my friends for that - I truly do have the best friends on the planet and I am SO lucky. After all who else would listen to my rantings and complaining and then stay on the phone with me for an hour and a half just so I didn't run to McDs and binge? Or talk to me for an hour and check on me every day even though they were sick (hugs to Jen). That's dedication because everyone knows I can TALK. I wanted to binge my brains out Thursday on my way home from a work seminar that didn't have me leaving White Marsh until 9:00 pm....yeah insanity. Thank goodness for Kevin for talking me off the ledge and letting me rant like a lunatic, although I know I could have called many others and they would have given me the same support and have in the past <3

Three years ago I wouldn't have even stopped to pick up the phone to ask for help...I would have driven directly to the nearest fast food joint and shamefully binged in seclusion, cried, felt guilty about my binge and the cycle would have continued the next day. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Straight to fat jail for me in the form of a food binge. But not now!! I have control of my own life.

And in some good news....Jen and I went shopping at the White Marsh mall yesterday and it was a BLAST! It's really amazing to be able to shop in the same stores as my fit friends FINALLY and be able to just try on cute party dresses because you want to and not burst into a puddle of pathetic fat girl tears because you can't find anything that fits. I've been there so many times before and felt so left out and miserable but that has come to an end.

I love how this dress looked and it made me feel awesome- but not enough to part with $100 for it- so here's a picture! Now looking at it I see all these flaws but I don't care because it's a size 16 and I haven't worn that dress size since I can remember. And this thing was FITTED. Happy day at Macy's!

I can't believe I just put it out there to the world my dress size, but I am damn proud of that and you better believe I will be shouting it to the world when I am a size 10!!